Hartley Charlton:

Apple today unveiled watchOS 27, featuring a redesigned dynamic app grid, new gesture controls, and a raft of usability and battery improvements.

The new dynamic app grid surfaces and rearranges five apps based on context and usage. Users can simply tap the bottom center icon to go to the rest of their apps.

[…]

Users can now create custom passes for any membership or card that uses a QR code or barcode, such as a library card, using their iPhone and access it directly from the Apple Watch’s Wallet app or pin it to the Smart Stack.

Hartley Charlton (Marcus Mendes):

Apple today confirmed that watchOS 27 will not support the Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch Ultra (first generation), or Apple Watch SE (second generation), effectively drawing a line at devices equipped with the S9 or S10 chip.

Apple had initially announced that Series 9 would be dropped, too.

Zac Hall:

Here are new features coming in watchOS 27 for Apple Watch

Hartley Charlton:

watchOS 27 contains a series of enhancements to fitness and sleep tracking, including new Workout Buddy insights, improved indoor run tracking, and more.

Hartley Charlton:

Apple yesterday announced a redesigned Find My app in watchOS 27 that brings all tracking functionality into a single, map-centric interface.

Previously split across separate Find Devices, Find People, and Find Items apps, the new app now consolidates everything into one unified view.

See also:

• watchOS 27 Beta Release Notes
• Mac Powers Users Talk
• MacRumors Forum

Previously:

• WWDC 2026 Keynote
• iOS 27: Custom Wallet Passes
• watchOS 26 Announced

Update (2026-06-11): Meek Geek:

Seeing a lot of lamenting for the Series 7/8 and Ultra 1 losing support for watchOS 27. But those models were EOL’d in the subsequent year.

It’s worse for SE 2 owners who purchased theirs just last year before the SE 3 came out in September. Totally shafted. Oof.

Greg Pierce:

In addition to watchOS 27 dropping support for a lot of pretty recent Apple Watches, the minimum target for builds moved up to watchOS 9. So, you can no longer support Series 3 watches that are stuck on watchOS 8.

Apple Event Apple Software Announcement Find My Sleep Wallet watchOS watchOS 27 watchOS Release Workout WWDC

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